Fawad Mir

SkyDrive is Microsoft’s native file hosting service similar to Dropbox and Google Drive that allows to upload files to cloud storage and sync them across all your Windows devices. Compared to earlier cloud storage and sync services offered by Microsoft (Live Mesh et al) , SkyDrive has a deeper integration with the latest versions of both Windows and Office. Just like Dropbox, Google Drive, and other popular sync services SkyDrive creates a folder in your hard drive and anything that is copied into it gets automatically uploaded to the cloud. You can access your cloud data using your account information from any computer with an internet connection. While being very useful, there is still a limitation that you need to manually copy the files and folders to your SkyDrive folder in order to upload them. SkyShellEx is an application for Windows that integrates SkyDrive into your Windows shell, allowing you to sync any folder to SkyDrive without changing the existing folder structure. You can also share your SkyDrive files and folders via email and URL. More on SkyShellEx after the jump.
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When faced with a situation where the limitations of tools provided in Windows itself do not let us to perform something efficiently, a little bit of Googling can often help in finding a third-party solution. The right-click context menu of Windows Explorer offers the 'Open with...' option to let you open a file with a program of your choice. The 'Open with...' option is the default actions for files that don't have any association, but it can also be useful for files that can be opened with multiple apps that you have installed. Through the years, we haven’t seen a lot of improvement in the 'Open with...' feature, and if you are not satisfied with the current options, check out OpenWith Enhanced. It is an application for Windows that replaces the native 'Open with...' dialog box of Windows with an enhanced version that offers more options.
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The smartphones of today are capable of doing so much that you don’t even need your computer for many tasks such as checking your emails, searching and browsing different websites, tending to your social networking needs, and sharing photos and videos with your loved ones. Smartphones have enabled us to perform all of these function and a lot more on the go, without having to sit in front of a computer. However, there are still tasks that require you to use a computer, such as giving presentations, playing several high-quality video games, watching movies on large screens, working on graphic and video editing, and heavy document and spreadsheet editing etc. While technology of today still has yet to put everything from a PC into a smartphone in its true form yet, what it has made possible is controlling the computer with a smartphone during many of these tasks. DroidPad is one such application that allows you to use your Android device phone as a mouse as well as a game controller for your computer. It provides you with multiple modes for using as a mouse, and eight different gamepad layouts. Moreover, a slideshow menu lets you have complete control over your presentations without having to present them using your laptop.
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It can often be difficult to send very large files over the internet or copy them to a slow USB 2.0 flash drive. Almost all email, file sharing and cloud storage services have a maximum file size limit for their free accounts, which is usually in MBs rather than GBs. Another scenario is where you want to transfer a huge file using a couple of low capacity flash drives that you have handy, with none of them having enough free space for the complete file, but the total free space on all of them is adequate enough for the purpose. In such scenarios, splitting large files into smaller chunks can be a great option. The receiver can then merge the pieces together to get the complete file. That's where tools like Chopping List come handy. This free utility has been specially designed to split text files into smaller parts. Rather than using the normal file size method, it allows you to split text files based on custom delimiters. When you specify a delimiter, the file will be split at every instance of that delimiter in the text.
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Whenever you are working on the computer, Windows is constantly creating, changing and deleting files in the background. Keeping track of all these file changes is impossible to do manually because of the sheer number of different files and their locations involved. Other than Windows' functions, our own activities in several applications also result in a lot of files getting created and modified. If you want to recall the files that were deleted or moved from a particular folder, having a log with details of all such activity can be a blessing. Previously, we have covered folder monitoring applications such as Folder Monitor that lets you monitor local folders and sends visual and vocal notifications whenever activity is detected inside them. Simple Watcher is an even better folder monitoring application that allows you to monitor local as well as network folders for file creation, changes, modifications and deletions. The app can display visual and vocal notifications, send out an email, copy files to another folder, execute a program or a batch file and a lot more whenever such an event occurs.
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Considering the countless options available out there, finding the right audio editor that exactly matches your needs can be a tough job. Most of the available tools can perform simple editing tasks such as converting audio files into different formats, splitting them, or just cutting a part out of the complete track. However, advanced audio editing that involves adding silence at different points, inverting and reversing the track, generating different types of sounds, amplifying the track, etc, requires you to have more sophisticated tools. We have previously covered several audio editing applications such as the cross-platform Ocenaudio for analyzing and edit audio files, as well as web apps like FileLab Audio Editor that let you to apply different effects to an audio track. WaveShop is an open-source audio editor for Windows that specializes in handling WAV files and modifies only specific parts of the track as per your requirement, rather than the whole track in one go.
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We have seen Microsoft make certain improvements in the Windows 8 version of Windows Explorer, now known as File Explorer. The options bar at the top has been replaced with a ribbon-based UI that groups similar options together under tabs. While the default Windows Explorer in Windows 7 provides you with seamless file browsing, navigation and search features, it lacks some advanced options, such as tabs, built-in multiple format archive management, folder/drive size charts, history view and advanced conditional selection, to name a few. Better Explorer is an application for Windows that gives you all the features of Windows 8 File Explorer in Windows 7, along with quite a few additional ones. Let's take a look at the features in detail after the jump.
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Leaving your PC unlocked when you are not in front of it while others are around is one of the worst things you can do as far as your privacy is concerned. This way, anyone can have unauthorized access to your computer and access your personal data, makes changes to your files, send emails using your account etc. Back in December, we covered an application for Windows called Lockscreen Pro that lets you unlock your PC using a password or USB drive and captures a photo using the webcam whenever there is an unsuccessful login attempt. However, some people do not like to enable screen lock on their workstations, as it requires you to enter the password every time you want to unlock it. Mouselock is a great web app for such people that doesn’t exactly lock the computer, but sends the owner an email whenever unauthorized mouse movement is detected while you are away, and also take a photo of the person who has attempted to use the computer. Although this will not keep others from using your computer, you can at least get to know if someone has done it in your absence.
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A lot of files get accumulated on our computers as a result of downloads from the internet, copying files from our cameras, mobile devices and USB flash drives, and file transfers over the network. If left unnoticed for a while. we often end up with multiple copies of the same files in different locations, which can be pretty annoying as they consume a lot of valuable disk space without serving any purpose. Manually locating and deleting duplicate files is obviously a very lengthy and tedious process and by default, Windows does not provide you with any option to deal with duplicate files in separate folders. To avoid all this work, you can use any of the available third party tools that check selected folders for duplicate files according to different criteria such as file names, metadata, and file sizes, image dimensions etc. NoClone is one such application for Windows that lets you search for duplicate files and folders in your system in order to easily get rid of them.
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Listening to music while working is a pretty common habit of most computer users, as it helps one relax and take the mind off of stressful things. It can also help people block off any disturbing sounds from the surroundings while working on their computers. Whether listening to music while working increases or decreases the productivity and efficiency is a debatable topic. After the default Windows Media Player, iTunes and Winamp, MediaMonkey is one of the most famous audio players available for Windows. In Windows 8, Microsoft has also included a new Modern UI-based music player. However, it does not provide you with a lot of options for playlist creation and metadata editing. Today, we have the Modern UI version of MediaMonkey that allows you to manage and play your music & video collection, create playlists, adjust equalizer settings, and edit metadata. More on MediaMonkey after the jump.
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Here at AddictiveTips, we have been religiously covering any noteworthy app that allows you to customize any aspect of your copy of Windows 8. The capability of these tools vary from bringing the Windows 7 Start Menu back, to disabling hot corners, and changing the opacity of window borders. A few months back, Waqas compiled a list of the best Windows 8 Start Screen modifiers and start menu apps that allow you to apply several UI-related changes to the operating system. However, the goal of most of these tweaks is the same: to get the familiar UI of Windows 7 back in Windows 8. Today, we have an application for you that not only brings the Windows 7 style Start Menu back to Windows 8, but also disables everything else related to Windows 8. Ex7forW8 (Windows 7 explorer for Windows 8) allows you to run the Windows 7 explorer shell, giving you the real feel of Windows 7 on Windows 8. Other than the Start Menu, it disables every Modern UI app and feature including the Switch List, Charms Bar, More PC Settings etc.
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Internet usage was completely changed with the invention of WiFi, allowing people to get rid of all those wires. Every device that requires or offers internet connectivity, including your laptop, smartphone and even television sets, has the WiFi option these days. WiFi allows you to get instant access to the internet wherever there is hotspot available, however, as a WiFi router has limited range, sometimes it can be hard to place a router in the right place where all devices can receive its signals. If you are connected to the computer through an Ethernet cable, you can use internet on your PC, but not on your smartphone. Virtual hotspot applications allow you to use a WiFi hotspot by projecting the internet from our LAN connection through your computer's wireless adapter, effectively turning it into a WiFi router. Today we have an open source application for Windows called Virtual Router Plus that allows you to do the same, allowing you to easily share internet with all of your devices. The app supports Windows 8 and lets you share all types of internet connections, including WiFi, LAN, Cable Modem, Dial-up, Cellular etc. Keep reading past the jump for further details.
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Microsoft Surface with Windows RT has been shipped in two versions: 32 GB and 64 GB. However, due to reserved space for recovery tools, Windows RT itself, and some pre-installed Modern UI apps, the storage space actually usable is quite low - only 16 GB in the 32 GB version, and only 46 GB in the 64 GB variant. While some of the installed apps such as Mail and People can be quite important to many, there are others that you might never use, specially when more and more good quality third-party alternatives are coming out in Windows Store. While you can't do anything about the space consumed by Windows RT and recovery tools, you can clear up all stock Modern UI apps to free up some space. In this tip, we will explain to you how to clear all Modern UI apps - from just your user account or all users - using the built-in Windows Powershell.
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Before everyone got used to Googling everything, dictionaries were more or less the only source for checking correct spelling of words and their definitions. Now, the auto-correct feature can be found in every smartphone, and Google’s “Did you mean this” has allowed people to write correct spellings even without learning them. You can look up definitions directly by Googling a word, and read whole articles on it on websites such as Wikipedia. However, if you are dependent on Google to look up words, a bad internet connection at the wrong time might make you feel handicapped in this regard. In such a situation, you can either use a paper dictionary, or an offline digital dictionary. TheSage is an offline dictionary and thesaurus tool for Windows that allows you to look up meanings, definitions and synonyms/antonyms of thousands of words, view examples of word usage, look up the words online, maintain word lists, and much more. In addition to the look up tool, it offers a wildcard tool to select index entries that match a wildcard pattern, and anagram tool to find anagrams of a character string.
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When you visit a website, history of all your activity including URLs of all the pages that you visit, passwords that you save, and website preferences that you set are recorded by your web browser in several files. Browser cookies are small files that holds information about everything that you do on a particular website. Even though having this information saved is useful as it saves you the trouble of entering all the information again, and helps the website determine the type of content you would be interested in, it can be used by malicious websites to breach your privacy and track your activities. Anti Tracks is an application for Windows that allows you to protect your privacy by allowing you to easily remove history and temporary data saved by web browsers as well as local operations such as searches, opening files etc. Its large collection of tools enables you to easily remove traces of all your activity from all possible locations on your hard drive.
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Icon management is very important in order to keep your desktop clean and have quick access to your important shortcuts and files. The native desktop context menu of Windows provides you with some settings to change the size of icons, enable auto arrange and align to grid, and toggle the display of icons and gadgets. Even though these options are good enough for basic arrangement, they are nothing to write home about. Stardock's Fences is a well-known tool that allows you to manage your desktop icons by locking them inside separate zones. Another application known as Desktop Modify lets you rearrange desktop icons in over 77 different shapes, while DesktopSaver remembers the location of icons in separate profiles, automatically returning them to their original location if they are accidentally moved. Today, we bring to your another desktop management software called Fluid Icon Organizer that allows you to quickly arrange icons on all four sides of your desktop, sort them according to name, age and usage, and lock them into place.
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Each day people from all walks of life upload thousands of videos on YouTube and other video hosting websites such as Vimeo and DailyMotion. Many individuals do it solely to share their videos with others, while professionals and organizations do it to promote their content or make money from ads. YouTube is one of the most visited websites on the internet and while Android and iOS have had their own official YouTube apps - complete with viewing, commenting and uploading features - for a long time, Windows 8 users have still been waiting for a dedicated YouTube client. Meanwhile, third-party solutions are being developed that allow you to view YouTube videos on your Windows 8 or RT device in Modern UI. Your Tube 8 is one such app that lets you browse YouTube videos and watch them from your Windows 8 or RT device without having to open the YouTube website in your browser. You can watch videos in small or full screen window, change the quality and share them with others. Moreover, you can filter videos according to different categories and types, and search for a particular one from the massive database.
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Nowadays, it is now common to see hard disks with over 1 terabyte of storage available, allowing us to store a huge amount of files on them. Though looking for a single file inside such a big pile can be quite tedious, if you have to do it manually. The search feature provided in Windows as well as third-party search tools allow us to look for files without having to go through each folder manually. More advanced search tools let you specify your search criteria and set different filters such for time and date (how old is the required file), size (how big is the file), extension (when looking for a particular file extension) and other similar parameters to narrow down the results and quickly locate the required file. However, whenever you search for a file, the system goes through all your files looking for your query, which can take quite a long time if your hard disk is loaded with a lot of data. Instant Document Search is a search tool focused entirely on local documents with keyword and phrase support, and it creates an index of only your file types and locations, allowing you to quickly get to whatever you are looking for. More on Instant Document Search after the jump.
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Writing and editing large documents is a time-consuming process that requires a lot of concentration from both the author of the document and the editor. While spelling and grammatical mistakes can be located using different tools, one particular type of mistake i.e. duplication of sentences and phrases can be more difficult to locate. Since there is no technical fault with a duplicate sentence, the usual grammar checks do not highlight them and in order to locate them, you usually have to manually go through the whole document while retaining full concentration - a tiresome practice when you are dealing with a considerably large document or a large number of documents. Text Deduplicator Plus is a portable tool for Windows that makes it easy for you to located duplicate words, phrases and sentences in large text files. In addition, it can also sorts lines into alphabetical order, count the total instances of duplicate items in the file, and even remove them. Keep reading to find out more about Text Duplicator Plus and its features.
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With every new software installation, a lot of registry values, shortcuts and other elements are created and added to your computer. Last week, we covered a small tool called Windows Uninstaller that allows you to uninstall applications easily from the context menu. However, it uses the native uninstall utility of Windows, which does not always remove everything associated with the apps, leaving residue such as folders, shortcuts, registry keys and at times, context menu entries. Moreover, that utility only allows you to uninstall third-party applications, and you cannot use it for uninstalling drivers or system components. Today, we have an application for you called Any Uninstaller that takes care of all these problems by allowing you to uninstall all software and drivers, even including native Windows applications such as Photo Gallery, Movie Maker, etc. and cleaning their leftovers from registry. You can use the tool to uninstall, modify or repair applications depending on your requirements.
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About Addictivetips

AddictiveTips is a tech blog focused on helping users find simple solutions to their everyday problems. We review the best desktop, mobile and web apps and services out there, in addition to useful tips and guides for Windows, Mac, Linux, Android, iOS and Windows Phone. Read more...